How do you all clean and strain your wax. I save up the cappings for a few years and try to melt down and clean up. I use cheese cloth to strain and it does not work the greatest. Any one have any simple methods for this operation.

Hi tillie, nice blog! What I got out of your blog was that your solar melter did not work. Did I not read far enough? Have you made any new modifications to this? I like the concept of what you did and think I can up with something along the same line that should do the trick, I thank you for sharing your ideas.

My solar melter works fabulously - but the first time I made it and tried to use it, it was the middle of October. For the wax melter to work - anywhere - you have to have days with several hours of sunny temps over 78 degrees - and that isn't usually the case in Atlanta in October.

I used the solar wax melter quite successfully all summer long. Occasionally I needed to set the wax out a second day if the day I chose for the first day actually was cooler or cloudy.

Linda T in Atlanta

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http://beekeeperlinda.blogspot.com~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~"You never can tell with bees" - Winnie the Pooh

sit through a hurricane, lose power for a week, run your life on portable generators, look down at the wax handling gear and have an idea!

place a collection pot on the ground. place a metal collander on top of the pot. place a t shirt cloth filter in the collander. place the wax in the collander on the t shirt. then place the unit in front of the generators exhaust. you will have clean melted filtered wax in an hour.

put a little watter in the collection pot to allow the wax to separate.

Bailey

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most often i find my greatest source of stress to be OPS ( other peoples stupidity )

It is better to keep ones mouth shut and be thought of as a fool than to open ones mouth and in so doing remove all doubt.

.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

Hmmm....OK this brings out a question for me. I have an enormous garbage bag of wax that I have been saving up for about 2 years in my freezer, keep adding wax scrapings, and so on to it. It is huge!!!!

The question is, do I need to wash the wax first before any kind of heating process to get rid of alot of gunk? I really need to get onto this this winter, my freezer needs room for other stuff, :) :) :) Have a most wonderful and awesome day, great health. Cindi

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There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold. The Arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold. The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, but the queerest they ever did see, what the night on the marge of Lake Lebarge, I cremated Sam McGee. Robert Service

cindi-tillie, i have no sun. cindi knows the problem :-). i also had huge amounts from a couple of cutouts.

cindi, i did not wash mine just because i thought it would be pointless. the wax was so dirty from the cutout. on the one that was the worst, it took a couple of meltings to get it clean. it was a lot of work.

if yours is just dirty with honey and hive stuff, i'd think just melting and filtering it would be sufficient.

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.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

Hi,I used Linda's solar waxmelter and it worked great in the hot sun.My wife and I tried melting the wax in a double boiler and pouring the melted wax through the paper toweland it just sits there and won't go through it.We ended up using 3 layers of cheese cloth, it's not as clean as it was in the solar wax melter but it was ok.

Check out this link for a melter, they took a "Presto Kitchen Kettle" and put a spigot on it.

I bought the Presto pot for melting the wax (after cleaning it and filtering it in the solar wax melter) and it's wonderful.

I like the stainless steel double boiler better if I want to keep the wax as yellow as possible. So if I'm pouring a wax block, and want it to smell and look like "new" ie, light and yellow as possible, the stainless steel doesn't change the wax's color (I bought the stainless steel double boiler on EBay as well) so that is my method of choice then.

The Presto Pot melts easily, evenly, and quickly; the spigot works well; but I have two problems with it:

1. It does gradually discolor the wax - looks more butterscotch coming out of it2. The spigot leaves about an inch of wax in the pot. You can slant the pot to pour the rest out, but the debris (very tiny debris) accumulates in the bottom so slanting the pot to get the last bit includes any debris that was still in the wax.

Linda T in Atlanta

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http://beekeeperlinda.blogspot.com~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~"You never can tell with bees" - Winnie the Pooh